My Letter Got Lost in the Mail
by miss-blanche
Summary: Clementine Phillips had a tainted start to life, with only her mother to guide her along. When her mother dies a bank account is uncovered in her name and she’s finally given the chance to take back those tainted years and meet her father: James Ford.
1. A Tainted Start

**A/N When I found out Sawyer was a daddy it really got my mind ticking over time with ideas. It really distracted me from the episode, but hopefully it made for a good fic beginning. ** **So enjoy the fruits of my musing now, while you get the chance (Knowing my luck it'll be gone by tomorrow) :)**

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**Prologue - A Tainted Start  
**

When Clementine Phillips was four years old she was playing in the park on the swings. Her best friend in the world; a young boy named John, came and sat beside her.

Clementine knew John's Mummy well, but had never seen the man that had accompanied him to the park. "Who's that?" She asked curiously.

John looked to where she was pointing. "My Daddy." He replied without hesitation. "Can I tell you a secret Clemmy?"

"Yes." She said with a tiny shrug, straightening her blue safari hat and leaning in close so no one else could hear.

"He's superman." John whispered.

Clemmy glanced at the man once more and wondered if her Dad, wherever he was, was Superman too.

* * *

When Clemmy was six she got up in front of the whole class, her heart pounding furiously. She looked down at the dozens of tiny faces staring up at her expectantly and gulped. 

"Well, go on Clementine. Tell us." Miss Jones said kindly.

"My Mummy works in a restaurant." She said clearly and quickly. Pleased that her ordeal was over she went to sit down but was stopped by the teacher.

"And your Daddy?"

Clemmy paused; she looked down at her shoes.

"I don't know Miss Jones."

With that she sat down on the floor cross legged, her chin resting on her knuckles. She didn't hear what the other kids said when they got up.

* * *

When Clemmy was eight she had a terrible day at school. On the trip home she silently pondered on the words that had been thrown at her all day. 

"What's wrong Clemmy?" Cassidy asked, taking her eyes away from the road for just a second to glance at her daughter in concern. Clemmy was a lot of things, but quiet wasn't usually one of them.

"Michael Flinders was calling me names."

"What?" Cassidy asked horrified. She parked the car on the side of the road and looked down at her green eyed daughter. "What'd he call you baby?"

"He called me a barstard. I'm not a barstard Mummy. I saw it on TV once and the man who was being called a barstard had done something awful… I haven't done anything awful Mummy."

Gripping the steering wheel Cassidy's knuckles whitened.

"Of course you haven't baby." She whispered. Hands shaking she put the car into gear and kept her glassy eyes on the road.

Clemmy clung to her seat belt wanting nothing more than to ask what 'Barstard' really meant, but didn't dare because she didn't want to upset her mother further.

* * *

When Clemmy was ten she sat on her bed with the curtains closed. She looked out into the hallway and made sure her mother wasn't checking up on her. 

She rolled over and stuck her head under the bed retrieving a wrapped present. She pulled it apart within seconds and pulled out the stripy blue tie she'd bought at the Men's wear shop herself.

With trembling fingers she opened the card she'd written.

_Dear Dad_

_I hope you have a good father's day!_

_Love Clemmy _

She placed it back in the envelope and stared at the peeling wall in front of her, hoping that maybe one day, she wouldn't spend father's day sitting in her bedroom wishing she knew him.

* * *

When Clemmy was thirteen, her friend Amanda came to school crying; bearing the news that her father had been killed over seas. Clemmy could only think of one thing to say; "I know how you feel." 

Amanda stopped crying and looked up for a moment; angrily.

"No you don't. You never will."

And as Clemmy watched her stomp away, she thought that though she might never know what it was really like to lose a father, she did know what it was like to lose him without him even being there.

* * *

When Clemmy was fifteen she wanted to go to John's sixteenth birthday party, unfortunately it was the same weekend she was going to her grandparents' house in Connecticut. It meant more to her mother than anything else that yearly visit, and there was no way of getting out of it. 

Unless… Clemmy lied.

She told her mother that she had a huge chemistry lesson that Saturday afternoon for extension, and that if she missed it she'd fail the entire semester.

Cassidy found out two months later and was furious. She fought with Clemmy for hours and it only ended when, in frustration she yelled; "That's just the sort of thing _he'd _do!"

Clemmy did something she'd never done; something that she'd thought was too weak to do before…

She fled to her room, locked the door, flung herself down on her bed and cried herself to sleep.

Dreaming that _he'd _come in and make it all better.

Because that's what fathers did.

* * *

When Clemmy was seventeen, she asked her mother what her father had been like but got no answer because Cassidy was unable to talk audibly. 

Two days later, Cassidy died in her hospital bed after a long battle with cancer, having not revealed any information about Clemmy's father.

* * *

**You have a date with that tiny purple button ;) It'll only take a second too... Please???_Insert blue eyed child for bribing purposes.. _How could you say no to that face:)  
**


	2. Unexpected Findings

**Hopefully, you haven't given up on me with the delay. I actually wrote a lot of this a few weeks ago but haven't had the chance to upload it. Reviewer thank yous at the bottom :) Enjoy. **

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**Chapter Two – Unexpected Findings**

It was raining. Tears streamed down the windows and left glittering trails behind them. The air was chilly and Clemmy hugged herself to keep warm. Weren't lawyers supposed to be rich? Couldn't they afford simple things like heating?

She'd been waiting for one hour, and eleven minutes. One hour and eleven minutes she'd never get back. One hour and eleven minutes that she'd spent getting number and number from the cold and one hour and eleven minutes she'd spent wondering just how many more minutes it was going to take before she could walk out the door and never come back.

"Miss Phillips?"

Clementine looked up and found herself staring at a small chubby man, who wasn't overly attractive but had a very pleasant face. He looked far too pleasant to be a lawyer. She'd expected someone who sported a frown, had neat grey hair, wore glasses and was very tall and lanky.

"Yes." She said immediately feeling thrown off, "I'm here."

She cringed inwardly, mentally reminding herself that lawyers didn't usually take a roll call.

"I can see that." He said with a small smile. He had a shiny black brief case in his hand that seemed to be ripping at the seams with papers and forms. Clemmy stared at it half expecting her mother's will to jump out on its own accord.

Following her gaze he said, "Up here."

She looked up; he already had it in his hand.

One hour and eleven minutes of sitting in a boring lawyer's office had made her feel extremely agitated. Frustrated with her stupidity and really feeling like she was ready to smash her head against the safety glass windows; she sighed.

"Can we get on with it already?"

Mr. Wellen needed no further encouragement. He was pleasant enough but he was also strictly a business man. He was there to go through her mother's affairs only, not stand around awkwardly, trying to be insufferably polite.

Clementine liked the way he used words coldly. For one week and four days precisely all she'd been presented with were niceties. She was so sick of them. She was sick of people looking after her like she'd fall to pieces if they didn't supply her with enough tea and hold 'share your feelings' forums every five minutes.

She needed some time to think things through herself. That's how it had always been. Clemmy wasn't a quiet type but when it came to serious matters she preferred to deal with them on her own.

He was soft spoken Mr Wellen, but his voice was very clear. He was the type, Clemmy mused, that had taken debating and public speaking at school.

He never used adjectives. Clemmy liked that too. He didn't need to dress things up. He just said things, and if they sounded terrible, then so be it, they sounded terrible.

"So, everything is in order." He glanced at her pleasantly, but then frowned. He leaned down and took something out of his suffocating brief case.

"Except this."

Clemmy looked at the piece of paper in his hand her eyebrows furrowed. It looked simple enough. It wasn't the size of the constitution, and there wasn't an excessive amount of writing written on it.

She took it and looked it over. Her eyebrows inching higher and higher as her eyes traveled down the page.

"This is…" She started.

"Strange?" Mr. Wellen supplied for her. "Yes that's why I looked into it."

"But surely it's just an account set up by my mother." Clemmy said confused.

"Well that was what I thought too." He stood up and began to pace, finally resting on his book case moments later a frown etched into his pleasant face, "But what struck me as strange, is that it's not in your mother's name."

"Well whose name is it in?" Clemmy asked still not following.

"Yours." He replied.

"Well, we were always short of money." Clemmy said slowly, "She learnt to think ahead. She probably just set it up so that if something ever happened I'd have a security blanket."

"Well, yes, but there was no evidence of this account in your mother's statements or…" He stopped suddenly and said; "Did she ever say anything about it?"

"About setting up a mysterious bank account in my name?" Clemmy said now feeling a little irritated. "No she didn't."

"Well then…"

"Mr. Wellen, I really do appreciate all of this, but I'd really rather just go."

She wasn't even mildly interested in his investigation. She knew… _Had known _her mother well. Setting up accounts so that they always had money of some kind was just the sort of thing she'd do.

Mr. Wellen looked up as if he'd just come out of a trance. "Of course. If you have no other queries you can leave."

Without another word Clemmy left. She looked over the piece of paper one more time and finally her eyes rested on the balance.

"_Fifteen thousand dollars???"_

* * *

"My mother did not have fifteen thousand dollars."

"It's called interest Clemmy."

"It's called 'Interest doesn't accumulate that fast' John."

"How do you know she didn't set it up when she was sixteen or something?"

"Because it was in my name."

He had been very patient since the funeral. He'd put flowers in vases, collected school work and even fed the cat (He hated cats) but he wasn't going to sit through hours and hours of ranting and raving about a mysterious bank account.

"Clemmy." He said calmly. "You're a wonderful person, but you just don't know when to drop things."

"You think I'm supposed to drop the fact that fifteen thousand dollars has mysteriously landed in my lap?" Clemmy asked incredulously.

"YES!" John exclaimed dramatically. "For the love of God yes! Most people would love fifteen thousand dollars! Don't question it!"

"You're an idiot." Clemmy muttered coughing a little on her cigarette. Oh yes, she was going to forget all about it. Mysterious bank accounts with fifteen thousand dollars in them turned up everyday. In fact it was a normality of life.

"You should give those things up." John noted successfully changing the subject as he wrinkled his nose in disgust.

"Did your mother just die?" Clemmy snapped irritably.

"No." John said softly.

"Then keep your 'Lung cancer will kill you' ploy for someone else."

John turned away awkwardly. He wasn't very good at the comforting thing. Changing the subject? Sure, he could do that. Feed someone's cat? Well he could do that too, even if it was horrible. But comforting was hard.

"I'm sorry about your Mom Clemmy." He said finally, making sure not to cringe when a waft of smoke came his way.

She turned to him, almost thoughtfully and replied. "I know you are." She dropped the cigarette on the ground and stood on it. "But you don't get it."

* * *

She tossed and turned that night. She could hear her Aunt snoring from the next room, a tap dripping from the bathroom and the idea of fifteen thousand dollars screaming at her incessantly.

It was an idea that struck her suddenly. Immediately after she wondered why she hadn't thought of it before. She sat up so fast that she almost hit her head on the low hanging lamp.

She jumped out of bed and raced into her mother's room. She hadn't been in there for a week. She'd wanted to preserve the memory of her mother for as long as she could.

But now she ripped open the wardrobe and pulled out boxes, not caring if her Aunt heard – she wasn't going to cover the truth.

She went through everything. Photos, books, quotes, presents, cards… But there wasn't a trace of him anywhere. No name, no photo, no number.

She flicked the last pile of photos across the room defeated. Slumping onto the ground she felt a tear slide down her cheek. She hadn't cried since her mother had died. The shock of it all, the funeral, the will… It had overwhelmed her. But failing to find something she'd wanted to find since birth was the last straw.

She cried all night. Sobbing uncontrollably. Nobody seemed to be listening. Not even her Aunt who was in the next room. She shook with grief and anger and frustration and injustice.

Because she knew where that bank account had come from. And where the fifteen thousand dollars had come from.

But she had no way of proving it.

She looked up from her pathetic position on the floor and saw something she hadn't noticed before. It was a small book on the top of the wardrobe. Wiping away her tears with impatience she stood up…

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**speckled girl - Thanks, here's more! (Even if it has been a long time...) Yep there's still an island. I'm going to sound like a TV channel here or something but stay tuned! **

**SassyLostie - Mmm, yep thought about the age thing. Sawyer is going to be older. But I don't know about the whole 'Clemmy' thing yet. She probably wouldn't like being called Clemmy too much in her teens but at this stage I'll probably stick with it. I love long reviews! Thanks so much! (And if there are any other picky things tell me!)**

**backdrifter - I'm glad I've drawn you in! I won't give away much, except that at this point, Sawyer is still on the island. For the rest you'll just have to keep reading! Sorry:)**

**bonboni - Yep, hope you like this installment! Glad I got the emotion across, thanks!**

** Malice - Thanks! Just added one :)**

**Alexis K - Yeah that's kind of why I wrote it. I thought 'What the hell man? There's no stories about Clementine yet?' So then I had to write one. Thank you so much for your review! **

**Lady Tourniquet - Yes you were, and for this, I applaud you :)**

**Like-The-Walls-Of-Jericho - Well I've updated (Not exactly soon but...) and I love you forever for your awesome comments! Hope you like this one.**

** Ivy3 - Glad you;re curious. Hope this answers some questions :)**

** Please review!!! (Also tell me if I missed any pesky spelling/punctuation problems) :)  
**


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